Nutritional experts currently believe that the risk of cardiovascular disease can be decreased by reducing one's consumption of saturated fats. As conventional butter is required by federal law (Act of 4 Mar. 1923) to have a fat content of at least eighty percent, compliance with current nutritional guidelines essentially requires that the use of this flavorful and widely used spread be curtailed or that it be eliminated from one's diet.
Acceptable substitutes for butter have not heretofore been available. Margarines--butter substitutes made from vegetable fats--only remotely resemble butter in the all-important characteristic of taste. In fact the taste is so inferior that margarines are often entirely avoided by discriminating consumers. Furthermore, margarines employ palm and other saturated vegetable oils and/or vegetable oils which are hydrogenated and thereby partially saturated to impart a requisite degree of solidity to the product. Such margarines may be no more nutritionally acceptable than butter is.
It would also be desirable for a conventional butter replacement to have an important property which conventional butter does not--spreadability after having been held at low temperatures. It is common to refrigerate butter at a temperature of 35.degree.-45.degree. F. At this temperature conventional butter can not be spread easily, if at all; and this is typically annoying and/or inconvenient.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,769,255 issued 6 Sep. 1988 to Ahmed et al. does disclose one process for making a butter product that is spreadable at refrigeration temperatures, and the fat content of the patented butter replacers can be low enough for the reduced fat label to be legitimately appended to them. However, the Ahmed et al. process has the disadvantage of requiring ultrafiltration of the oil-in-water emulsion from which the butter replacer is made. Ultrafiltration equipment requires a significant financial investment and furthermore generates a waste product which presents a significant disposal problem in that it cannot be dumped or discharged into a sewer.
It will be apparent to the reader that there is therefore an existing and continuing need for a spread which has the taste, mouthfeel, and other attributes of butter but has a significantly reduced fat content and can therefore be used without ingesting the high levels of saturated fat appurtenant to conventional butter. There is a similar need for a process which can be employed to make a butter replacement of significantly lower fat content which has the attributes of conventional butters and which, in addition, is spreadable at refrigeration temperatures.